Softball: Mount St. Joseph's comes back to down Germantown Academy

SPRINGFIELD — All it takes is some luck, a couple clutch hits and a win to boost a team’s confidence. Mount St. Joseph got all three in a much-needed victory over Germantown Academy.

Despite being down 5-1 through four innings, Mount scored a combined nine runs in the fifth and sixth inning to steal a 10-5 win over GA. Capitalizing on GA’s fielding errors, the Magic found ways to manufacture runs in the final two innings and got good relief pitching from Kalee Karabin to seal the win and gain some momentum heading into the second half of the season.

“We persevered after going down early,” Mount coach Billy Thompson said. “We went down early and the girls kept their heads in it and started hitting the ball. GA started making some errors and we took advantage of that. I’m glad we were able to put it all together.”

It appeared early on that the Patriots were in control of the game. With the scored knotted at 1-1, Rachel Wolfson’s RBI single in the first for GA and Lauren Stabler’s hit by pitch with the bases loaded for Mount, the two sides were even until the third inning when GA exploded for three runs. Dempsey Cooper knocked in the first run of the inning with an RBI triple, and then scored on an error at the tail end of Wolfson’s triple. Bryn Riesenberg plated Wolfson with an RBI ground out and the Patriots had a 4-1 lead. Cooper collected another RBI the next inning with an RBI sacrifice fly, and GA looked to be on its way to an easy win.

Advertisement

“I thought our pitcher pitched well,” GA coach Tonja Mangerman said. “We did some really good things in the first few innings, but in the end errors killed us.”

However, Mount was not about to give up, especially at home. Karabin came on in relief and gave up just one run over the final four innings. While she kept the GA offense at bay, Mount’s hitters tried to chip away at the lead as best they could. The Magic needed a spark or a break, whatever came first. They got the break they needed with a GA throwing error with one out in the fifth and the floodgates opened.

“Karabin is our freshman pitcher and really the future of the team,” Thompson said. “We’ve seen her grow through this season and I think she is going to develop into a really good pitcher for us.”

Margot Buckley started things off with an RBI single, which was followed by Amanda Hawthorne’s RBI double. However, the big blow came on Mary Buckley’s two-RBI single with two outs, pulling Mount even at 5-5. It was a big confidence boost, but with two possible at bats left, Mount was not about to let up.

“I think we were in it; I think we lost it for ourselves,” Mangerman said. “We really compounded our errors and I think it got to us mentally. They changed pitchers and we didn’t hit her as well as we hit their starter. We beat ourselves.”

The Magic pulled ahead in a big way with a five-run sixth inning. Buckley and Sammy Burns each had RBI singles, but the backbreaker for GA had to be Hawthorne’s two-RBI triple. After adding another run on an error, Mount was back in command and would not relinquish the lead.

“There have been some games where we were down and tried to fight our way all the way back and it didn’t work out,” Thompson said. “This is a good confidence builder. We go into the second half of our season now and hopefully we can carry this with us the rest of the way.”